Binaural audio through loudspeakers

The ultimate goal of binaural audio with loudspeakers (BAL), also known as transauralization (Cooper & Bauck, 1989), is to reproduce, at each of the listener’s eardrums, the sound pressure signals recorded on only the ipsilateral channel of a stereo signal. If the stereo signal 1 was encoded with the head-related transfer function (HRTF) of the listener, and includes the proper ITD (interaural time difference) and ILD (interaural level difference) cues, then delivering the signal on each channel of the stereo recording to the ipsilateral ear, and only to that ear, would ideally guarantee that the listener’s ear-brain system receives the cues it needs to perceive an accurate three-dimensional reproduction of the recorded sound field. Since, with playback from two loudspeakers, each of the cues is also heard by the contralateral ear (crosstalk), accurate 3D audio reproduction through BAL requires an effective cancellation of this unintended crosstalk. Without such crosstalk cancellation (XTC), the ITD and ILD cues will inevitably be corrupted.